


still it will return

by ace_corvid



Series: Halloween Countdown Ficfest 2020 [7]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Superboy (Comics)
Genre: Also timkon but it's not worth tagging, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Beware the tags if you know fear gas you know whats up, Both these boys need a hug, Brotherly Bonding, Canon Temporary Character Death, Damian Wayne is Bad at Feelings, Fear gas, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt Tim Drake, If you can call this bonding, Panic Attacks, Prompt Fic, Scarecrow's Fear Toxin (DCU), TDC Unlucky Thirteen 2020, if fear gas can be called that, just tagging to be safe really, no beta we die like robins, stay safe in your reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27196693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ace_corvid/pseuds/ace_corvid
Summary: Red Robin pulled out his rebreather.Robin, with a raw look of panic he doesn't have time to smother before Tim spots it, did not.Tim didn't even hesitate for a moment before shoving his rebreather on Robin's face.(Alternatively; Tim gets fear gassed for Damian.)
Relationships: Tim Drake & Damian Wayne
Series: Halloween Countdown Ficfest 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978783
Comments: 34
Kudos: 540
Collections: TDC's Unlucky Thirteen





	still it will return

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: **Fear Gas** / Halloween Parties
> 
> i have been _waiting_ for this prompt. only a little bit evilly, i promise. but yeah no halloween parties here. welcome to day 7!! we're officially a week in!  
> i struggle a little bit with writing damian but i really tried for this, i hope it's ok! but yeah this is a lot more angst heavy than i usually go for, beware the tag warnings!! stay safe in your reading guys!  
> without further ado, here's the fic!
> 
> title: "Fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return." From Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo (my favourite book of all time.)

Tim has had a feeling something like this would happen the minute he heard that Scarecrow had broken out of Arkham.

He hadn't fought Scarecrow properly for a good long while. He'd coincidentally just being on different cases or had been with the Titans when he broke out. It wasn't intentional. He hadn't been fear gassed in even longer- not since he was Robin, and honestly not even late in his career. Batman had been meticulous about rebreathers and gas masks since he'd watched Tim fit on a gurney, choking on his own whimpers, trying not to scream and mostly failing; he'd gotten to be a lot louder during in Robin tenure, braver even, but in a gas induced panic, he fell into old ways like a cold comfort, and still tried so hard to be quieter.

Bruce hadn't said anything about it, but he had practice hiding what he was feeling when he was shaken from his kids. And Tim hadn't even been one of them, at the time.

Anyway, as soon as Scarecrow got out, and Tim was there, all hands on deck, Tim couldn't really explain it. He just had the weirdest feeling that everything was about to go wrong in a spectacular way.

The Bats are never this lucky for long; least of all Tim.

And as it turned out, he was right to be wary.

Tim and Damian got stuck together on a team, which was really the icing on top of the steaming pile of shit that was the situation.

Sure, they were brothers, and these days Damian even accepted that. But they're still like grease and water; they just don't mix, Tim thinks. It's easier now, but they'd never quite gotten past that initial hostility.

They were able to be civil, though, even if they were never each other's first choice. Sometimes the banter they'd uneasily fall into was even _fun._ Damian really knew his way around a good insult, and when he's not gunning for everything Tim hates about himself, he's actually managed to make Tim laugh a couple of times. And Tim returns it in kind, even if Damian takes a couple seconds to look mortified after realising he'd just laughed at one of Tim's jokes.

So they go out on patrol, and they lightly bicker as they hunt for the Arkham escapee in question, mostly shooting the shit and not going for each other's throats. They were both pretty good at pretending like they hadn't used the other's weaknesses against them before. It's strange, but Damian has actually grown up a lot since trying to murder Tim to usurp his place in the family. And these days, Tim isn't so bitter about losing it anyway. (Maybe a little bitter, but that was mostly Jason's questionable influence.)

“Ok, but Damian. I have had vegetarian food before and enjoyed it. Vegetarian lasagna though? It's an affront to God. It tastes so bad, Dami, why?”

“Call me Dami again at the risk of your own kneecaps, heathen. And no names in the field.” Damian hissed back with no heat to it as they ran across another rooftop. Tim snickered as they made the leap to the next building, landing as easily as he ever had. Damian ended up having to roll, but Tim was enjoying this line of argument too much to comment on it.

“Not denying the lasagna thing, I see.”

“Who _cares_ about lasagna?” Damian groans, but his body language isn't tense, and his eyes are lit up with something that isn't anger. He's enjoying this too.

“I don't know, Garfield?” Tim shrugs, something catching his eye in the window of a warehouse across the street. He slows down his run and goes to the edge of the building to get a closer look. Damian nearly jumps to the next roof before realising Tim has stopped. He rumples his nose in that way Tim would think was cute if Damian hadn't tried to shank him multiple times.

“What the fuck is a Garfield?” Damian says, petulance overlying the honest question. Tim can actually read that now, where he hadn't been able to before. But Tim can't answer. Gas balloons out in the periphery of the windows of the warehouse, and Tim signals Damian to look. Damian catches it immediately and his eyes narrow.

They move together through the thick of the night.

Scarecrow is waiting for them, because of course he is. They're caught off guard by it, and it shows.

Red Robin pulls out his rebreather.

Robin, with a raw look of panic he doesn't have time to smother before Tim spots it, does not.

Tim didn't even hesitate for a moment before shoving his rebreather on Robin's face.

There was no panic, really. Not in the first few seconds. Just the calm, crisp reassurance that his little brother was OK, and that he didn't really matter in the face of that.

“It's going to be OK.” Tim said to Damian, and also kind of to himself. Quietly, so Scarecrow couldn't hear.

“Red Robin.” Damian replied tightly, with dawning horror. Damian would have never seen Tim under fear gas before; he was going into this blind. He didn't know what a normal reaction for him was. That wasn't good.

From over on the other side of the warehouse, Scarecrow began to laugh, a grating melancholy thing that sent shivers down their spines.

“It's been a while since I've gotten to see _you_ scream, Little Bird.” He crooned, and Tim finally couldn't hold his breath any longer.

One breath, then two. The sickly familiar smell of freshly brewed fear gas spilled into his nose and his mouth. Damian looked incensed next to him, breathing harshly into the rebreather. When he started hallucinating, Damian was going to be fighting on his own. Dammit.

Scarecrow's laughter rung in his ears like funeral bells. A solemn toll reminding him of his doom.

Damian began to yell at the villain, but Tim couldn't tell what was being said. He was already retreating from reality, trapped in his own mind. Tim knew that wasn't a great place to be even when it wasn't chemically altered.

He was so different now, no longer a child- so much had happened. So much had changed. At the end of the day, could he still go crawl into his brother's bed when this was all over, trying to hide the trembles in his hands long past since he'd recovered? He wasn't that young thing, so easily reassured by simple affection any more. And he and Dick were so different since everything went down.

Tim's still pondering that when he first notices Kon's dead body, sprawled across the floor in a pool of blood. That hadn't been there a minute ago.

He falls to his knees beside him, uncaring of the blood seeping into his already red uniform. It barely changes colour- Tim is already stained with the blood of the people he'd lost. Instead of taking Conner's body into his arms, like he had in some distant memory he vaguely recalls, Tim just sits there and shakes like a leaf, tears in his eyes threatening to spill. There's no Nightwing to pull him into his arms and get him to stop looking this time. But he doesn't scream. How could he? This isn't fear. This is a familiar picture that plays out behind his eyes before he goes to sleep. This is business as usual.

“This is all your fault.” Bart says, from where he's sat on the floor, cross legged next to the body. He's covered in his blood, and Tim knows with a foreboding surety that it's Bart's own. His death hadn't been peaceful. “We're dead. Again. You didn't save us. This is all your fault.

Tim nodded. That made sense. “This is all my fault.” Tim echoed.

He doesn't realise he's repeating it until a bloody parody of Stephanie cuts in. “You can't save anyone.

“I can't save anyone.” Tim repeats dutifully. He's shaking so hard his vision is blurring, he cannot breathe through the weight of the guilt on his chest. But he's still not screaming, because this is his reality.

At least, he isn't screaming until he slumps over, falling to the side. Then the _real_ nightmare begins.

Damian watched Drake slink to the ground, like his strings had been cut, and before he knew it, an terrible, awful screeching began. Damian looked over from where he was parrying Scarecrow for just a minute, and ended up being knocked on his ass for his troubles.

That should have been him, on the ground there. It was _his_ rebreather that hadn't been working, that he'd took out of his bag to be fixed and forgot to replace in the mean time. He hadn't even had time to process the consequences of that before Drake was shoving his onto Damian's face with a scarily blank look in his eye. It was like he hadn't even thought about it, he was just running on pure instinct. It should have been _him_. 

He'd pressed his emergency beacon the second Drake had breathed in the gas, but it didn't actually set in that this was an emergency until he'd started talking to himself, and stopped responding to Damian calling his name.

God, he was annoying. By all rights, he should hate Damian. And yet his first instinct had been to put Damian before himself, to use his last precious breaths of clean air to reassure him. Damian didn't need such fickle reassurances, and it infuriated him to no end that it had actually been a comfort.

Nightwing takes the opportunity of the lapse in the fight to burst through the window, rebreather already on. A preparation Damian had failed to take. 

The fault was his own.

Richard paled at the sight of Drake quaking on the ground, choking off his own screams and whimpering. He twisted around and kicked Scarecrow in the gut in what seemed to be a much harsher maneuver than strictly necessary, but  _that much_ Damian could understand. He wanted to  _maim_ the villain in front of him himself.

“Give him an antidote and get him out of here.” Nightwing barked the order, lighting up his escrima sticks with flickering electricity. Damian smiled a vindictive grimace at the thought of Scarecrow getting electrocuted, and went to gather the writhing Drake in his arms. He was flailing wildly, eyes blown wide with panic. Damian barely managed to get him to the rooftop they'd spotted Scarecrow on in the first place.

“Red Robin.” Damian gasped from the effort as he lay him on the roof. “You have to calm down. The antidote should already be in effect.”

“No.” He wailed. “M' alone. I'm gonna be alone, I- I don't wanna. I  _can't_ .”

Damian swallowed, viciously pushing away memories of trying to drive him out of the family. They weren't going to help him now any more that dwelling on guilt would.

“You're not alone.” Damian insisted. “You have everyone back at the Manor. I... I am here with you now.”

Drake shook his head so hard it must have hurt his neck. Damian tried to get him to stay a little more still as the antidote took its course, but he has no sedatives that wouldn't interfere with it. Drake just has to make it through.

“They're all dead, Dami.” Tim says in a heartbroken, whining voice. “I'm gonna be all alone again.”

“No one is dead who didn't manage to claw their way back.” Damian awkwardly tried to comfort him, but got the feeling he didn't do very well. He wasn't Richard, this wasn't his forte. He doubted Drake got much comfort from his presence anyway.

“Everyone- everyone leaves me anyway.” Tim cried, before going back to screaming incoherently.

Then he begins to convulse, and Damian wonders if  _he_ got a dose of fear gas, with the way pure and utter panic grips him.

“Drake. Drake!” Damian says frozen still, watching as his brother gets worse, the antidote not helping and others nowhere near arriving. “ _Timothy!_ ”

He doesn't respond. Damian has to think quickly. He needs someone who can move fast and he's definitely going to be able to contact. Usually his go to is Jon, but Damian doesn't have his phone, and Jon's powers are too fritzy to count on him hearing Damian if he yells. But Jon isn't the only Kryptonian out there, and Damian's relatively sure he once heard Tim mention when they'd been talking about their respective Supers, that his clone friend always kept an ear out for him.

The question was, would he hear Damian?

“Superboy!” Damian bellowed. “Superboy, Red Robin needs help, please!”

Damian barely has to wait before Conner Kent is there, in all his glory, eyes immediately on Tim, who has finally stopped convulsing. He looks pale and unmoving, near dead, and Damian can see the panic in the other's eyes.

“What does he need.” He says, voice terse, tense as an elastic band about to snap. Damian moves to answer, but Tim beats him to it.

“Conner?” He asked, voice agonizingly hopeful and pathetic.

“Hey baby.” The clone replies softly, eyes wide and worried and  _oh_ . Damian didn't know  _that_ .

“You're dead.” Tim cried, trying to wrench out of his arms. “You're  _dead_ .”

“I'm not, sweetheart.” Conner just holds him closer, pressing Tim's ear to his heartbeat. “I'm here with you. I promised I wouldn't leave you again, remember?”

Tim is too busy screaming 'Kon' to answer, while the clone looks completely stricken. Damian takes the initiative instead.

“We need to get him to the cave.” Damian swallowed. “This antidote is too slow acting, it must be a new strain. We need to get back there to synthesize a new one.”

“Gotcha.” Superboy replies, effortlessly lifting a screaming, crying Tim into one arm and ruffling Damian's hair before lifting off with them both and speeding them to the manor.

Timothy is fine. 

They got the antidote on time. A nights rest and it should be a clean bill of health, Alfred himself said. There's no reason to worry.

And yet. Damian  _does_ .

To crave comfort is a childish thing Damian was trained out of early. But he cannot help but feel the itching under his skin that urges him to seek it out. He cannot sleep, he doesn't have room to think with the size of these thoughts in his head. It's exhausting, with no solace in sight.

So he tells himself it is logical to want reassurance that Timothy is alive. He's no stranger to trauma and how it affects him. He sneaks down the hall and opens Timothy's door slowly. Barely peaks his head in really. A quick check he'd do for anyone in the family.

Timothy, naturally, spots him immediately, though it's clear he's barely awake. His head immediately snaps over, only relaxing when he sees it's him. He rolls over and lifts his comforter in a clear invitation.

Damian is not a child, and he does not need childish reassurances like climbing into bed with his brother, but. Well. Having Timothy's heartbeat steady beside him as the hellish night draws to a close can only help. And judging by the way Tim gradually stops shaking, it helps him too.

It may have even been worth the fuss Richard made when he found them the next morning.

**Author's Note:**

> I REALLY STRUGGLE WRITING DAMIAN CAN YOU TELL
> 
> you can find me at:  
> Tumblr: ace-corvid.tumblr.com  
> Twitter: twitter.com/ace_corvid  
> come yell at me!
> 
> thank you so much for reading, see you next time! And if you enjoyed this, a comment would really make my day!


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